"Well written, funny and wistful" - Paul Linford; "He is indeed the Lib Dem blogfather" - Stephen Tall"Jonathan Calder holds his end up well in the competitive world of the blogosphere" - New Statesman"A prominent Liberal Democrat blogger" - BBC Radio 4 Today programme"Charming and younger than I expected" - Wartime Housewife

"In many ways, the desire to pull all of those in poverty under one roof, literally or figuratively in the case of Universal Credit, stems from the same impulses today as it did in 1834: a desire to drive down spending and make people work, or work harder." Alannah Tomkins says Universal Credit is like the Victorian workhouse.

Simon Parker looks at the government’s response to civil disorder in Liverpool in the 1980s and specifically at the policy of 'managed decline'.

"'It’s a programme designed to knock current affairs broadcasting off its axis,' said editor Ross Edwards in that week’s Radio Times, 'then blow a hole in its spluttering head'. It did nothing of the sort, of course. If anything, it carved a path for it." Jude Rogers marks 25 years of The Day Today.

Christopher Hilton says the concert programmes held by the Britten-Pears Foundation offer valuable insights into social history: "With a jolt, we realise that virtually all of the events documented here would have been seen through something of a blue haze."

Ian Wells, an English chess prospect who died in 1982 at the age of 17, is remembered by simaginfan.

On the day parliament was supposed to vote on her deal to leave the EU, here Theresa May gives her reasons for remaining in the European Union shortly before the 2016 referendum. pic.twitter.com/6i0njr79CS

Friday, January 18, 2019

The Cambridge to Mildenhall railway is a closed railway between Cambridge and Mildenhall in England. It was built by the Great Eastern Railway, and opened in two stages, in 1894 and 1895.

Traversing thinly populated agricultural terrain, it was not heavily used. The GER introduced cost-saving measures on passenger trains, including push and pull trains and a conductor-guard system, and in 1922 opened three very basic lineside halts.

The passenger service on the line was discontinued in 1962 and, except for a short stub, the line was closed completely in 1965. There is no railway use of the former route now.

A wolf sanctuary based in Shropshire has been given the go-ahead to expand.

Visitors will be able to see the animals in their natural habitat after proposals for an educational facility were approved by planners.

With the backing of Born Free actress Virginia McKenna, Wolf Watch UK applied to Shropshire Council for permission to build a holiday let and learning centre at its 100-acre sanctuary near Bishop’s Castle.

You will find out more about this project if you search the Wolf Watch UK website.

During the 2017 general election campaign I blogged about Jeremy Corbyn's cordial relations with the Provisional IRA.

Though they had not been the trump card that the Conservatives expected - it was all too long ago for most voters attracted by him - I still found them hard to forgive.

I quoted an earlier post where I wrote of the Provisionals' bombing campaign:

I was working in London at the time shoppers and workers were being killed by it.

The very least I expect from the party of the workers is that it condemns those who murder them.

Rather to my surprise, I have discovered that Karl Marx agrees with me.

Last night I came across the Clerkenwell Outrage of 1867 - an explosion caused by the Irish Republican Brotherhood (or Fenians) in an attempt to spring one of their leaders from Clerkenwell Prison.

It failed in its objective, but caused the deaths of 12 people, and injured 120, in the neighbouring houses.

One of the men behind it, Michael Barrett, became the last man to be publicly hanged in England, despite his defence that he had been in Glasgow at the time of the explosion.

Well, we English weren't very good at convicting the right people for Provisional IRA outrages in the 1970s, so who knows?

But what interested me was the reaction of Karl Marx. He is widely quoted across the interent, though I can't find where he wrote is, as arguing:

The London masses, who have shown great sympathy towards Ireland, will be made wild and driven into the arms of a reactionary government. One cannot expect the London proletarians to allow themselves to be blown up in honour of Fenian emissaries.

On Thursday 7 February Rushcliffe Lib Dems are holding a supper event with Tom Brake MP, the party's spokesperson for Brexit and international trade.

It is being held at the Larwood and Voce Pub and Kitchen, in the shadow of the Trent Bridge cricket ground in West Bridgford.

As well as the chance to hear from Tom on the latest Brexit developments, the organisers promise you lively conversation and the chance to network with fellow Lib Dem members from across the East Midlands "in a relaxed and exclusive venue".

the Lib Dems’ 12 MPs are now looking at backing the PM’s Brexit deal on the proviso that she hold an In/Out referendum over it.

The option emerged after its leader Sir Vince Cable saw Theresa May to discuss the crisis in No. 10.

A senior Lib Dem MP told The Sun: “There is a conversation going on and a range of views in the party, and that is one option we’re looking at”.

There are two immediate problems with this.

The first is that, given the huge Commons majority against Theresa May's deal, the support of the Lib Dem MPs is neither here nor there.

The second is that it would presumably put us in the position of voting for the deal in the Commons and then campaigning against it in the referendum. That is a possible approach, but it will not do much for our reputation for consistency.

Tory Leavers, of course, was explode at the prospect of a referendum where the choice was between May's deal and staying in the EU.

That is an enticing prospect, but to go down this route would be a remarkable reversal of May's approach until now.

All in all, it sounds as though Vince Cable has made her an offer she can's accept.

"If the Brits are serious about securing access to the Single Market for goods, they will have to begin negotiations with, essentially 27 other countries after March, each of which will have a veto, as will the new European Parliament. What happens to the £100 billion or so worth of services the UK sells to EU countries every year is anyone’s guess. Services are not usually included in trade deals and 'passporting' is due to end." Edward Robinson says the prospect of Brexit gives him the shivers.

"A little less aggression and a little more listening and Rory Kinnear might’ve been the star of the recent Brexit drama on Channel 4." James Millar on the failure of Cameron, Osborne and Craig Oliver to learn from the referendum of Scottish independence.

Who owns England? In many cases, explains Anna Powell-Smith, it is impossible to find out.

"At the end of the book, he still has nobody to love, and nobody to love him back, but he knows who he is: a grasping, arrogant, ambitious coward who would rather accept the job of Deputy Postmaster General, and the rather remote prospect of a Cabinet job when he’s proved his worth, than change." Ray Newman reviews No Love for Johnnie, a 1959 novel by the Labour MP Wilfred Fienburgh.

Expect a curious sight on Saturday – King Charles I in all his finery stumbling through a Leicestershire field to find a little known landmark.

Dance DJ and musician Daniel Williams is heading to Tur Langton in the guise of the Stuart monarch, who lost both his crown and his head after the English Civil War.

The 41-year-old, from the West Midlands, has recreated the king in an attempt to fire people’s imaginations and interest in history as he tours the country visiting significant places Charles visited during his reign from 1625 to 1649.

Sunday, January 13, 2019

Norman Baker was my favourite Liberal Democrat MP of the party's glory years. He was a powerful campaigner, friendly and with enough quirkiness to be a true Liberal. And he had a talent for getting up the noses of all the right people.

Looking back on the death of David Kelly in 2003, it does remarkable that no inquest was held into his death. Instead, it was bundled up with Lord Hutton's inquiry into "the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr Kelly".

Those circumstances where expanded to include the intelligence reports the Blair government used to justify war in Iraq and the BBC's reporting of them. Poor Dr Kelly faded into the background.

HS2 Ltd's chief executive Mark Thurston has told a meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Rail Group that train speeds and frequency on the new line could be changed to reduce costs, says the Evening Standard.

Its report says the options discussed included lowering train speeds by around 50kmph (30mph), reducing train numbers from 18 to 14 per hour and changing from slab to ballast track.

A low-speed high-speed train would be a perfect symbol of the dynamic new Brexit Britain.

More and more, politics today reminds me of the early 1970s, when prestige projects were promoted and then abandoned.

There was the third London airport at Maplin (announced 1971, abandoned 1974), the Channel Tunnel (started 1974, abandoned 1975) and Concorde, which was kept going, but proved hard to sell to anyone but Britain and France's national airlines.

HS2, you may recall, was approved by David Cameron, as a way of making good on his pledge not to build another runway at Heathrow.

Then came Theresa May, Brexit and the need for a new prestige project to show that Britain was open to the world. So a new runway was announced after all.

Ever since that, HS2 has been in danger of looking a bit of a white elephant.

I suspect it will be built from London to Birmingham, but it will be a long time before it gets any further than that.

"I used to go along with my friend and just be really upset by the local skinheads that hung out there," said Siouxsie after witnessing racist taunts against the staff. She turned her anger into song.

Hong Kong Garden reached number 7 in the UK singles chart in 1978.

And what is Peter Cook doing here? Wikipedia explains:

Revolver was a British music TV series on ITV that ran for one series only, of eight episodes, in 1978.

It was produced by ATV. The series producer was Mickie Most, who was inspired to make the programme after he saw an interview with Top of the Pops' producer Robin Nash, in which he (Nash) boasted that TOTP was a music programme that the whole family could enjoy together.

Most set out to make a show which was the antithesis of that, and which featured live music performances most closely related to the then emergent punk rock and new wave music scenes - though it also included other more mainstream artists such as Dire Straits and Lindisfarne as well as more original artists such as Kate Bush.

The official host of the programme was Chris Hill, but it is remembered more for the contributions of Peter Cook. Cook played the manager of the fictional ballroom where the show was supposedly taking place, and frequently made disparaging remarks about the acts appearing. Revolver was recorded in front of a live audience in Birmingham.

My first instinct was to attribute this to George de Chabris, but it turns out that he was not on the scene until the 1970s. So it does look to be the work of Lord Bonkers. I shall have to choose the right moment to ask him.

Incidentally, the Double Diamond sign I once photographed in Market Harborough is no longer there.

"It will open the door to extremist populist political forces in this country of the kind we see in other countries in Europe," Mr Grayling told the paper.

"If MPs who represent seats that voted 70% to leave say 'sorry guys, we're still going to have freedom of movement', they will turn against the political mainstream," he added.

"There's already a nastiness and unpleasantness in our politics, more people with extreme views, more people willing to behave in an uncivilised way," he said.

In other words, MPs must allow Brexit or the far right will benefit.

When a politician resorts to this argument, it is always a sign of desperation and can end badly. Let me give you a little history lesson.

Back in 1993 the Liberal Democrats ran the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. And the Labour opposition had a problem.

For the second time in less than a year one of their councillors in the Isle of Dogs had resigned, which had done nothing for Labour's popularity in the ward. They were worried about holding the by-election.

The strategy they hit upon was to talk up the threat the BNP posed. People were told they had to vote Labour or they would let the fascists in.

I don't know if this was meant to fight of the BNP or to prevent the Liberals get a foothold in a ward where they had never done very well. But, either way, it proved a disaster.

The voters were looking for a way to punish Labour, and the Liberals would not do as a protest vote as they ran the council.

And the message the voters heard was that if they wanted to punish Labour the way to do it was vote BNP.

As soon as they had done so, the Labour Party - locally and nationally - launched an assault on the Liberals, blaming their racist campaigning for the BNP's success.

I spent a morning delivering in the by-election and there was nothing wrong with the leaflet I was given, but that is beside the point here.

Because it was Labour's tactic of talking them up that did much to help the BNP to victoryin an area of traditional Labour strength.

Similarly, what voters who are angry about the way Brexit has gone will hear today is Chris Grayling telling them that they should turn to the far right.

What they should do is turn their anger on the mainstream Conservatives who made them impossible promises in the referendum campaign and have continued to do so to this day.
Chris Grayling is a good example of such a politician.

Friday, January 11, 2019

On their official Twitter feed today XTC revealed that they once bought the Spencer Davis Group's old PA.

XTC were formed in 1972, by which time the Winwood brothers had long parted from Spencer Davis. Perhaps they bought the PA after Davis had reformed the group for a couple of years in early Seventies.

This fact put me in mind of a story I once heard Tom Robinson tell on the radio. You can find it in an old Independent article:

He is happy to recall an incident from the first time he lost his place front of stage. "I was down to selling off my guitars and amplifiers. And when a musician sells off his instruments it's getting serious. Among the people who replied were two scruffily dressed rastas," he says.

"They were looking at the stuff in my garage and TRB was written on one of the flight cases. One of them says, 'Yeah, Tom Robinson, what happened to him? He was really good, man!'

So I said, 'Well actually, I am Tom Robinson.' And the guy said: 'Hey, you ought to keep at it, you know. People who keep at it always come back in the end.' So I said 'Sure, look at Eddy Grant.' And he replied, 'I am Eddy Grant.' "

The funny thing is that I remembered the story as being the other way round: Robinson buying Grant's PA when the latter's career was in decline.

That is something that could easily have happened in the late Seventies.

Tuesday, January 08, 2019

We left Geoff Marshall and friend walking from the least used station in Leicestershire to the least used station in Nottinghamshire.

Leicestershire's Bottesford, well placed to serve a large village, is quite busy for a least used station. But across the border, Elton and Orston is one of those kept open with a minimal service because that is cheaper than going through all the formalities of closing it.

It would be worth the walk from Bottesford just for those two road signs on the bridge.

The modified ambulance includes a CT scanner, laboratory and state-of-the-art facilities.

This specialist ambulance allows patients to be diagnosed and treated on board, rather than losing valuable time transporting them to hospital.

Patients in the unit can receive lifesaving treatment “on the go” when every second counts.

Thst report, which comes from the Braintree & Witham Times, suggests the initiative is now to be used across Eastern England.

Now Phil Knowles, health campaigner and leader of the Liberal Democrat group on Harborough District Council, tells me the East Midlands Ambulance Service is interested in the idea too.

He says:

The mobile stroke unit would need to be strategically placed in the East Midlands to maximise its potential. It may well be that any trial would need to be in a rural area rather than close to a major city stroke unit. That would be a decision for the professionals

What I do know know is just how important time is when reacting to a stroke and how critical it is for medical professionals to begin treating patients as quickly as possible.

Monday, January 07, 2019

LMS No. 10000 and 10001 were the first mainline diesel locomotives built in Great Britain. They were built in association with English Electric by the London, Midland and Scottish Railway at its Derby Works, using an English Electric 1600 hp diesel engine, generator and electrics.

Under British Railways, the locomotives became British Railways Class D16/1; they were initially operated primarily on mainline express passenger services on former LMS lines, both in single and in multiple. In 1953, they were transferred to the Southern Region for comparison with O. Bulleid's British Rail Class D16/2 diesel locomotives.

Twenty-four miles there and back is one hell of a hike to your local jobcentre. But when Ray Taylor, 56, had his benefits cut for 13 weeks after illness meant he missed an appointment to sign on, he had no option but to get out his walking shoes.

He doesn’t have friends with cars to give him a lift, and with no money coming in, he couldn’t pay the £7 bus fare from the small Cambridgeshire town of Ramsey to Huntingdon, where he is registered for benefits. And if he missed signing on again, he would be sanctioned again.

Soon Ramsey will have no buses even if you can afford the fares.

You might advocate relaxing the sanctions regime and allowing people sign on over the internet. Except that many poor people won't have access and the libraries where they could log on are being closed across rural England.

My headline is not hyperbole. Spending cuts are making life impossible for the poor in rural areas.

William Cobbett once pointed out that Britain has the Crown Jewels and the National Debt.

Something similar is true of our railways today, judging by this story from the Daily Mirror:

A transport giant took £35million out of one rail franchise just months before abandoning another.

The massive dividend was paid from the East Midlands Trains franchise to owners Stagecoach, company accounts reveal.

It represented a £20million increase on the previous year’s payment and came less than a year before the company abandoned the London-to-Edinburgh East Coast Main Line franchise last year.

When a rail franchise does well, the private company takes the profits. When it does badly, that company walks away and the losses fall on the taxpayer.

I commute with East Midlands Trains every day, and they provide a good service. But the baroque system that was set up when the railways were privatised has little to recommend it.

Those who oppose nationalisation have to recognise that what we have now is far from free enterprise. The Department for Transport now has much more say in the running of the system than it ever did under British Rail.

Besides the most important question is not ownership but the separation of track and trains. The people who operate trains should also be responsible for the lines on which they run.

Sunday, January 06, 2019

It was in 1974, when I turned 14, that I was most interested in the singles charts. I collected them from Record Mirror and really cared about which record would be the next number 1.

Almost ever since, I have been quick to say it was a thin year for music and claim that I sensed it even then.

There may be some truth in that claim - I did, just, remember the glory days of the 1960s. Certainly, I rushed out to buy Substitute when The Who re-released in 1976 because it was so much better than anything else in the charts.

if we go back 45 years, to 5 January 1974, we find one of the best top tens in British chart history.

So let's go back to the glory days of blogging, when bloggers discussed posts by other bloggers, and see if he is right.

1. Slade: Merry Xmas Everybody

I didn't like Slade in 1973 and I don't like them now, even though Noddy Holder was inspired to go into music by Steve Winwood and the Spencer Davis Group.

Maybe there is a bit of snobbery here - a leftover from the brief middle-class period of my childhood that had ended the year before, but there is something vulgar about them. Certainly, they seemed to attract all the worst kids at school.

Merry Xmas Everybody is a period piece, best listened to with a tin of Quality Street (they used to be bigger) and the Christmas double-issue TV Times.

2. The New Seekers: You Won’t Find Another Fool Like Me

You young people won't have hard of them, but The New Seekers were chart players in those days. By now they were in danger of sounding a little dated - I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing had been right on the mark back in 1971.

Alwyn Turner says You Won’t Find Another Fool Like Me is "a kind of 1930s pastiche", and that is about right.

3. Gary Glitter: I Love You Love Me Love

Leave aside, if you can, the fact that he is a raving pervert, Glitter was just not very good. Mentioning rock and roll in every lyric does not make you a rock and roller.

4. Wizzard: I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday

Still no great record, but Wizzard were some band. I used to feel guilty that I had liked, them, but one you learn about the Birmingham music scene and grasp that they were a natural development from The Move, you feel different.

And as Alwyn says, they had previously had a run of great singles: Ball Park Incident, See My Baby Jive,Angel Fingers.

5. Alvin Stardust: My Coo-Ca-Choo

This one was played for what months on Radio Luxembourg (listened to under the covers when your Mum thought you were asleep) before the BBC took it up and it became a hit.

Great record? Maybe not, but these are great memories.

6. Marie Osmond: Paper Roses

I hated the Osmonds in all their varieties, though Donny seems a nice guy today. As Alwyn points out, this is the only American record in this top 10.

7. Leo Sayer: The Show Must Go On

Now you are talking. He may be remembered as irredeemably naff, but Sayer's first appearance on Top of the Pops, singing this song in a clown's costume had an extraordinary impact.

Sadly that recording is now lost, but it is one of my great TV pop memories, up there with ABBA at Eurovision and my first sight of the Spice Girls..

8. David Essex: Lamplight

Alwyn is rightly appreciative of this one too. As I wrote of Essex's first previous as a teens' heartthrob Rock On:

It's not that this is a very good record: it's that it is far better than it needed to be.

9. Mott the Hoople: Roll Away the Stone

A very good band and a very good song. Sometimes Ian Hunter's voice, with its hint of Johnny Rotten, let's you see what was to come.

10. Roxy Music: Street Life

I can remember not liking Roxy Music - too grown up, too sexy - but by 1974 I think I had learnt to like them. And this is a great track.

So, one of the best top tens in British chart history? Maybe not, but it was much better than I expected.

And if you turned it on its head, making Roxy Music number 1 and Slade number 10, it would be even better.

Tory Leave politicians have put pressure on the BBC. Alex Spence has the leaked WhatsApp messages that prove it.

"The man who sold you Brexit says you are poor because you have inferior genes and brains, and better education won’t change that." Forget Benedict Cumberbatch and study the real Dominic Cummings, says Will Black.

Rutger Bregman argues that a shorter working week could help reduce accidents, combat climate change, make the genders more equal and more.

New York’s empty shops are a dark omen for the future of all cities, argues Derek Thompson.

"In 1953 her luck changed when she appeared in the charming comedy Genevieve about the annual London-to-Brighton vintage car race. The film, a huge hit in the UK, showcased her perfect comic timing not least in the very funny dancehall scene where she joins the band and, much to the surprise of her friends (and the band), plays a brilliant jazz trumpet." Rob Baker believes the British film industry never made the most of Kay Kendall's talents.

A bus company has been criticised for displaying vegan adverts on vehicles in Shropshire, which relies heavily on agriculture.

Shropshire Council’s deputy leader Steve Charmley, councillor for Whittington has hit out at Arriva for displaying an advert on the back of some buses, with a message about turning vegan for January.

Mr Charmley has now protected his tweets, but the Star quotes what he said:

Whilst I don’t object to anyone choosing what they eat and when they eat it. I really object to arriva buses running Veganuary adverts in Shropshire, a great County built on Agriculture! I am asking to meet with Arriva to discuss. I hope @NFUShrops does the same. #vegansneedfacts.

This is sinister in its call for censorship. But more than that, it is silly. Vegans eat vegetables. Where does Mr Charmley imagine vegetables come from?

Yet his views are in line with the retreat from the free market the Conservative Party is currently staging.

In the EU referendum campaign Conservatives told us that Brexit would lead to a renaissance in international trade. Now they are planning for a siege economy and showing increasing signs of enjoying the prospect.

Wednesday, January 02, 2019

It was when I was working on the book, The Invisible Art, A Century of Irish Music, 1916-2016, that I first registered the name Maud MacCarthy.

She was an Irish musician who was born in Clonmel in 1882 and died, a month short of her 85th birthday, in Douglas on the Isle of Man in 1967; she was buried at Glastonbury.

Maud MacCarthy is a name that has appeared on this blog before. In 2012 I discovered that she had been a girlhood friend of Nora Logan, the suffragette daughter of our here J.W. "Paddy" Logan, who was Liberal MP for Harborough from 1891 to 1904 and again from 1910 and 1916.

Dervan's article gives us more information on MacCarthy's mysticism later in life and on her musical career when young:

I discovered that MacCarthy appeared as a violin soloist with two of America’s greatest orchestras.

She played the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in February 1902 when she was 19, and the Brahms Violin Concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra the following November, still aged only 20.

This is an achievement that has not yet been replicated by any later Irish string player.

"I can't overestimate the effect that Stevie Winwood's amazing voice had, and his wonderful soulful piano and organ playing. He came out of nowhere and blew people away. I remember Paul Jones [Mannfred Mann singer] saying, 'I've been in a blues band for four years, and suddenly this 17-year-old-kid comes out and he sounds like Ray Charles, and he plays like him!' What a talent: to emerge fully-formed at that age was extraordinary, and it had a huge effect on every musician around that time."

I am reminded of the reason Eric Clapton gave for playing a Stratocaster:

Hank Marvin was the first well known person over here in England who was using one, but that wasn't really my kind of music. Steve Winwood had so much credibility, and when he started playing one, I thought, oh, if he can do it, I can do it.

The version of Georgia on My Mind that Argent chooses is not the live one with Winwood on the organ that I always listen to, but this studio version where he is playing the piano.